The CIA inspector general’s office has said it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a comprehensive Senate torture report, despite lawyers for the Justice Department assuring a federal judge that copies of the documents were being preserved.

The erasure of the document by the spy agency’s internal watchdog was deemed an “inadvertent” foul-up by the inspector general, according to Yahoo News.

One intelligence community source told Yahoo News, which first reported the development, that last summer CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document.

What a convenient mistake! And if similar "mistakes" happen to the other copies - all of which are held by the CIA - then all their torturers will be off the hook, because the evidence against them would have been destroyed. Now who would have an interest in that happening, I wonder?

Despite their protests, this should be treated as a deliberate destruction of evidence by the CIA. And those responsible should be prosecuted for it.